Conformity Experiment

Introduction:
As social animals humans enjoy sociallyinteracting with each other and we have a need to be accepted within a group (Aronson, 2012). This interaction is what makes us unique and it allows us to convey our emotions, facilitate discussions, or even pass down knowledge. However, this social interaction also expose us to social influences, and this is significant because we as individuals constantly engage in these interactions. This meant that our opinions and behaviors are not static and are subject to change at a moment’s notice through social interactions. One form of social influence is conformity which is the change in one’s behavior due to pressure from other people or an imagined group of people (Aronson 2012). We can look
As stated above, humans have a need to be accepted by others and for this to happen, each individual within the group must share the same belief as the group.An experiment by Donna Webster and Arie Kruglanski showed that dissenters who voiced their opinion were rejected by the entire group and this explains that we tend to conform to behaviors around us for the sake of not being rejected(Kruglanski & Webster, 1991).The effects of conformity on an individual is apparent in the study taken place in a men's shower room which explores the concept water conservation (Aronson and O’Leary, 1982-1983). In the study, the participants are students (male) who would also shower, and the confederate would turn off the showers whenever they are applying soap before rinsing off. The study found that people are more likely to follow the confederate (conforming to expected behavior) and save
This conformity study was conducted in Sidney's cafe, andthe type of study conducted was an observational study. There are two differentgroups of participants partaking in the study. One of thegroup are composed of people who are occupying a table by themselves. When these people were leaving, I took recordings and notedwhether or not they tucked in their chairs. The other groups of participants are those who are sharing their table with other people. However, the recording is only needed to be made when two conditions are satisfied, with one being thattwo or more people who shared the table are left within one minute. The second condition that needs to be satisfied is that the first person who left must have tucked in their chair. Once both of these conditions are satisfied, I recorded the number of people who followed the suit and also tucked in their chairs and the number of people who did not tuck in their chairs. Most importantly, the first person who tucked in their chair is not counted towards the number of people who tucked in their chairs, because they did not conform to